August 2000, Number 30
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Y AND OM IO N NO O S R P T H S E A R E L A C N E O N I T T E A R N A R Y EC R IB TO O OBSERVA August 2000, Number 30 Observing Proposal Reminder: The next proposal deadline is October 1, 2000. Please make a note to get your proposals for observations using the Arecibo Observatory facilities submitted by that date. such as heat transport, momentum flux and the small magnitude of the vertical D-region Vertical Wind Measure- and chemical mixing. However, its mea- wind. Although previous measurements ments at Arecibo surement in the mesosphere (60-100 km of vertical winds were made by Gangu- Qihou Zhou altitude) is very difficult because of the ly (Geophys. Res. Letters, 7, pp. 369- region’s general inaccessibility to many 372, 1980) at Arecibo, an integration ertical atmospheric motion is im- techniques (such as balloons and aircraft) time as long as 45 min was needed due Vportant for a number of reasons to the poor signal-to-noise ratio (S/N). Such a long integration time does not allow one to study gravity waves hav- 95 (a) 95 (b) IPP=4 ms IPP=1 ms ing a period less than an hour, which dominate the gravity wave spectrum in 90 90 the mesosphere. Here we report a sig- 85 85 INDEX 80 80 D-Region Vertical Winds ................. 1 Telescope News ................................. 2 75 75 Altitude (km) NAIC Director’s Comments ............ 3 Solar System Studies ........................ 5 70 70 Space and Atmospheric Sciences .... 6 Radio Astronomy Highlights ........... 7 65 65 Square Km Array Workshop ........ 12 -10 -5 0 5 10 -10 -5 0 5 10 Topside Ionosphere Workshop ...... 13 Vz (m/s) Vz (m/s) Pulsar Workshop ............................ 13 Fig. 1: (a) Vertical velocity at 12:30 LT on November 25, 1999 by using a 4 ms inter-pulse-period Recent Colloquia ............................ 14 scheme. The integration time for this plot was 64 seconds and the number of pulses used to obtain each Peeps into the Past.......................... 14 power spectrum was 128. (b) Vertical velocity around 12:30 LT, October 2, 1999 by using a 1 ms inter- Comings and Goings ...................... 14 pulse scheme. The integration time was 8.5 min. The number of pulses used for the power spectra was Of General Interest ........................ 16 256. (Courtesy Qihou Zhou) Job Opportunities .......................... 17 The NAIC is operated by Cornell University under a Cooperative Agreement with the National Science Foundation. Upward Wind Measured by the Arecibo ISR sis of the incoherent scatter spectra will allow the determination of ion-neutral collision frequency, temperature and 90 negative ion composition. The short in- 85 tegration time achieved by our 4 ms IPP scheme is not only a matter of time reso- 80 lution but often a matter of feasibility. For instance, our results show that the 75 Doppler broadening of the power spec- Altitude (km) tra due to vertical bulk motion averaged 70 over 20 minutes is of the order of 12 Hz for a probing frequency of 430 MHz. 65 Average Vz (m/s) This broadening is comparable with the 9 101112 incoherent scatter spectral width below 75 km thus rendering the results derived LT (Nov. 25, 99) from the spectra averaged over 20 min -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 Upward velocity (m/s) inaccurate. With a soon-to-be installed Fig. 2: Vertical velocity measured by the Arecibo incoherent scatter radar on Thanksgiving (11/25), second 430-MHz feed and an existing 1999. The average velocity shown on the right was averaged over 08:25-12:54 LT. The two black lines VHF radar at the Arecibo Observatory, indicate the region of valid measurements. (The color version of this plot can be seen in the associated the technique used here will be signifi- journal article–Zhou, Geophys. Res. Letters, 27, pp.1803-1806, 2000–or the web version of this newslet- cantly improved. It will also be possible ter available at http://www.naic.edu.) (Courtesy Qihou Zhou) to study diverse topics relating to the dy- namics, structure and composition in the D-region including heat flux, momentum nificant improvement in the measure- mentioned above. For typical Arecibo transport, composition of negative ions ment of the mesopause vertical wind conditions, the noise level at the altitudes and interactions of gravity waves with using the incoherent scatter radar (ISR) of interest can be easily 30 fold greater turbulent layers. We expect an active D- technique. with the 1 ms IPP than with, say, a 4 ms region research program in the coming IPP. The 4 ms IPP scheme has the dis- years. In the D-region/mesosphere, we mea- advantage that the unaliased measure- sure the Doppler shift of the plasma, ment bandwidth is correspondingly This article is adapted from Zhou, Q. which moves with the neutral atmo- narrower, thus lowering the altitude cov- H., Geophys. Res. Letters, 27, pp.1803- sphere, by taking the Fourier transform erage by about 8.5 km. For high-reso- 1806, 2000. Interested readers can either of sequentially transmitted radar pulses. lution vertical wind measurements it is refer to the GRL article for details or This is the so-called pulse-to-pulse FFT necessary to sacrifice altitude coverage contact Qihou at [email protected]. (PPFFT) technique. Ganguly used an for accuracy. Figure 1 compares the ver- inter-pulse-period (IPP) of 1 ms, which tical velocity profiles obtained using the Telescope News provides a 1 kHz bandwidth for the spec- 1 ms and the 4 ms scheme, respectively. tra measured. Although the ionospheric Below 90 km, the 4 ms IPP scheme with Don Campbell return from the F-region is folded into 1 min integration is clearly far better than Pointing and Platform Stability: New the D-region measurements for the 1 ms the 1 ms IPP scheme with 8 min inte- pointing observations were made in Feb- scheme, the F-region spectra will essen- gration. Figure 2 shows several hours ruary. The resulting pointing model has tially be flat within the 1 kHz spectral of data derived from the 4 ms IPP an rms error close to 6 arc sec for all sys- width, which thus appears only as noise. scheme. An analysis of the data sug- tems above 1 GHz. Due to the hard work One can typically obtain useful D-region gests the existence of a turbulent layer of Phil Perillat (NAIC) the platform tie- spectra up to about 98 km, above which around 80 km and non-linear wave-wave down system is now in operation keep- spectral aliasing becomes too severe to interation below 80 km (see Zhou et al., ing the mean height of the platform very get useful information. Geophys. Res. Letters 27, pp. 1803- stable so that daytime pointing accuracy 1806, 2000). Although the 1 ms IPP scheme pro- is comparable to that obtained at night. vides almost the largest bandwidth for The reason for the high accuracy of Receivers: The new 1.7 GHz to 3.0 GHz the PPFFT technique for the Arecibo vertical wind discussed here lies in the receiver is now available for use. How- ISR, its drawback is the increased noise dramatic improvement in the S/N of the ever, the system temperatures for the two from the F-region ionospheric returns as incoherent scatter spectra. A full analy- polarization channels need to be im- August 2000, Number 30 2 NAIC/AO Newsletter NAIC Director’s Comments Paul F. Goldsmith, Director NAIC recently returned from a very stimulating sabbatical year spent primarily in a variety of European institutions, Iincluding the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge (UK), the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, Bonn (Germany), the École Normale Superieure, Paris (France) and the Osservatorio di Arcetri, Florence (Italy). In between, I spent intervals in Ithaca and Arecibo. I was working on data from SWAS satellite, but also on 21-cm absorption line data from Arecibo obtained with Di Li (Cornell). The two ended up having an interesting potential connection in terms of molecular cloud structure, but that’s another story. While Don Campbell was Acting Director of NAIC during this interval, I did assist in a variety of administrative tasks. In particular, I am pleased to announce that Dr. German Cortes will be joining the staff in Ithaca as a Senior Research Associate. German is an expert on the electromagnetics of antennas and will be working on a number of projects to improve performance of the Gregorian system, as well as in the design of focal plane arrays and other advanced systems. Other new staff members at Arecibo include Jeff Hagen, who has already made real contributions to real-time data acquisition software. We hope to have a new receiver engineer on board by the end of the year to work with Lisa Wray, another new electronics department staff member, to work on the ever-growing (but still not big enough) stable of receivers. Otherwise, I can announce that the upcoming Arecibo Users and Scientific Advisory Committee (AUSAC) meeting will be November 13-14. Dr. Tom Troland has agreed to be the Chairperson Designate, while Dr. Phil Myers is this year’s Chair following his work putting together the very helpful report from last year’s meeting. The Visiting Com- mittee meeting will be November 15-17. Dr. Jacqueline van Gorkom will be the Chairperson of this year’s meeting. This format follows those of recent years, with visitors staying at Hotel Vistamar in Quebradillas. Our plans to build additional VSQ units to allow housing of committee members on site have progressed, but no construction has begun due to financial constraints.